Essays On Gender And Governance - United Nations Development ...

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Gender and Governance : Concepts and Contexts parties—barring the collaboration of some groups with the communist parties—it stayed out of the domain of electoral politics. The grass roots movements with which women were closely associated were those of the poorest and most marginal groups (tribals, landless poor, slum dwellers, subsistence agriculturalists) which generally had little electoral clout and no electoral aspirations. 10 The urban feminist movement was primarily drawn to non-electoral issues like violence against women. VP Singh resigned from Congress and formed the Jan Morcha (Peoples’ Front), an avowedly “non political” movement which brought new groups into politics and helped bring the National Front to power in 1989. Compared to the students’ movement, farmers’ movement and backward caste movement, the women’s movement was less closely associated with opposition parties and less committed to regime change. It was during this period that the women’s movement began to explore new ways of exerting its influence over the state. Today, a broad cross section of Indian activists have embraced the strategy of working more closely with the state. Many activists have expressed frustration that the protest tactics they had pursued for so long had not yielded better results. Women’s movements have created important political constituencies. They have often played key roles in determining whether or not candidates who will advance women’s interests will be elected. In the Philippines, for example, support from the women’s movement was critical to Corazon Aquino’s election. While she was president, the number and influence of women in public office increased significantly. Women’s groups took advantage of new democratic processes to push for reforms in public policy such as the Philippines Development Plan for Women. Similarly in the U.S., Bill Clinton’s stance on abortion, education and health care reform won him women’s electoral support in his first successful bid for the presidency in 1992. Clinton in turn appointed several women to key political posts and more women were elected to Congress in 1992 than in any previous election. But as Aquino and Clinton bowed to pressures from conservative political and religious groups, their commitment to reproductive rights and other women’s issues declined. 10 One important exception to this generalization is the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), a caste based party of dalits (scheduled castes) which appeals to the landless poor. 36
Gender and Governance : Concepts and Contexts On the one hand, a long standing bias in feminist circles against women’s movements that are closely associated with state institutions has prevented feminists from recognizing some of the benefits that can come of working with the state. For example, one of the major problems that has confronted the autonomous women’s movement in India has been of extending its reach to the rural poor. The All China Women’s Federation which is affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party and the state has not confronted this problem. With 98,000 full time cadres on its pay roll, it commands the resources, personnel and authority to have established a strong base among rural women. On the other hand there are innumerable examples of state sponsored initiatives co-opting women’s movements in virtually every political setting. In Russia and Eastern Europe, extensive legislation designed to improve the position of women thwarted possibilities for women to organize independently around their own interests. Most women were so alienated from the Soviet Women’s Committee, the official women’s organization, during the communist period, that they were unresponsive to feminist appeals even after the demise of communism. Authoritarian states in Nigeria and Kenya have undermined feminist movements by taking over successful women’s programs, and making them dependent on state funding while reorienting them from their, more radical goals. Quite frequently, the advances that women achieve as a result of a close relationship with the state are double edged. In Mexico, for example, the government headed by president Salinas de Gortari that was elected to power in 1988, introduced a number of programs that were designed to assuage opposition to the previous regime’s austerity programs. One of these was the National Solidarity Program (PRONASOL or Solidarity) which created new channels for social involvement, while also enabling the central government to achieve greater control over grass roots movements. Women’s groups were confronted with the need to relinquish their autonomy in exchange for access to state resources. The same double edged character of movement and state collaboration is evident in Australia. A number of groups that were active in the women’s movement formed the Women’s Electoral Lobby (WEL), a non partisan organization that included women 37
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